Monday, June 4, 2012

I will be candid in response to your misconceptions about liturgical theology, understanding that you approach them with a point of view affirming a nominalist status quo. Consider that as your underlying position, because that is precisely the reason behind the OCA reaction to it and our renewal of liturgical witness, frequent communion, liturgical emphasis, etc.

In the MP, be it abroad or at home, this nominalist conception of liturgics as a "ritual" but not fully epikletic mystagogical nor eschatological reality prevails. That hardly makes this point of view "conservative," but, rather, "pseudomorphized" (to use Fr. Florovsky's and Fr. Schmemann's critique of the pre Revolutionary church mindset and practice) and "captive" to Western paradigms of "validity" and uncritical acceptance of later accretions which have obscured and nominalized worship sometimes in the names of later Saints, sometimes in the name of "fidelity," mostly under the purview of obscurantism. Thus, MP practice is not "conservative" but simply "institutional," reflecting Western accretions and understandings adopted when the encounters with the Reformation and Counter Reformation became encapsulized in a clergy schooled to confront these currents under Uniate - Jesuit - Protestant pressure. The dialectical process was premised upon rejection of awareness of the Orthodox position as sovereign and simply resulted in a reverse engineering to "prove" the Orthodox position using the paradigms of Westerners, where the Orthodox position then became marginalized, forgotten, vexed, lost. Pseudomorphosis, Western captivity.

The MP parishes abroad tend to follow an OCA pattern, or unfortunately: a PJ pattern, and thus their liturgical observance is not much different. Admittedly, the presence of pews (not all OCA churches have pews by far and not all future OCA parishes will have them either) and the Western reality does not allow us fully to make as much an impact in the lives of the faithful,but we are not giving up. By the same token, ROCOR (and the Russian and Greek TOCs by extension) have their own issues when it comes to liturgics which makes the matter a wash of liturgical expediencies demanding regularization.

What the OCA set about intentionally to do was to undergird Sacramental witness in the Eucharist and active participation, thereby opening the door for more fulfilling worship in Vespers, Matins, the Hours, etc. when the Eucharist is viewed as the culmination of worship by placing the believer in the eschaton, as a participant in the Kingdom and living member of CHRIST, thereby fulfilling mankind's purpose in the sanctifying of creation. This is the "conservatism" of the Holy Fathers and the true intent of worship. This is the fulfillment of the Kingdom, and anything that undoes that or obscures it with nominalism is far from "conservative" and definitely not Orthodox, but iconoclasm of the Holy Tradition, for it nominalizes the LIFE in the HOLY SPIRIT of Orthodox believers and by its mode relativizes, even attempts to stifle the reality of HIS ADVENT and continued PRESENCE in the Church with nominalist rejection of HIS LIFE for a solely human mode/contrivance.

Fr. Michael Pomazansky's critique suffers on many points. Firstly, it reads as if he has only read the introduction to the "Introduction to Liturgical Theology" and then stopped, thus offering an incomplete treatment. Secondly, he does not deal with the facts Fr. Alexander presents and does not test them on their terms by providing Patristic evidence to the contrary: while that would be quite a task, for the prayers of the liturgies reinforce the reality of Fr. Alexander's liturgical ecclesiology in and of themselves. Thirdly, he returns to the pre Revolutionary paradigm and stamps it as "legitimate!" ignoring all notions of Western accretions and effects on Russian Orthodox liturgics, theology, piety, mindset, and goes forward from that vantage point simply pounding a fist on the table. Fourthly, his appreciation for the eschatological dimensions of the liturgy and of the inherent nominalism of his approach are things he simply refuses to glean out of Fr. Alexander's treatment. He makes it a point to concede an eschatological reality to the Eucharist in later essays but does not address the nominalist accretions which have distanced believers from full participation, nor does he note their harmful effects on piety and on the salvation of souls.

Nominalism is stifling worship and betraying it and preventing people from their full Life in CHRIST. That is Fr. Alexander's point. Fr. Michael just can't get there. That says it all.

Fifthly, Fr. Michael seems ignorant of and/or oblivious to the reality of the Liturgical Movement in which Fr. Alexander participated. This movement examined the history of liturgy, liturgical piety, theology, etc. One of its principle points was that the Byzantine liturgy was the culmination of liturgics and presents an expression of the "pleroma," "fulness" of liturgy LACKING in other liturgies, especially later Western forms, which thereby presents a paradigm of WHOLE Participation in Eucharistic LIFE when liturgical piety is not obscured or reduced in nominalized "symbolic ritualisms" or reduced to discussions of "validity" and "moments" of consecration.

Worship in CHRIST and LIFE IN THE SACRAMENTS CONSECRATES THE BELIEVER TO THE LIFE OF THE GOD MAN IN HEAVEN AND THIS PROCESS OCCURS THROUGHOUT ACTIVE LIFE IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN A LIFE OF ORTHODOX WORSHIP AND DISCIPLINE, REACHING ITS WHOLENESS/FULFILLMENT BY PARTAKING OF HIS BODY AND BLOOD AND CONSTITUTING THE CHURCH IN THE EIGHTH DAY. This is the Orthodox "moment," life, rather, of consecration and these holistic emphases constitute its "validity."

This awareness is the principle reason why Fr. Alexander both abandoned Western Rite paradigms and replied to Vatican II/Uniate types that the Byzantine liturgy does not need a "reform in form or structure" but a RENEWAL IN THE SPIRIT in "consciousness, devotion, piety," for in and of itself, it is an expression of WHOLE LIFE in the HOLY SPIRIT, being the Sacrament of the Kingdom Come, Redeeming the World, above all others. That was Fr. Alexander's answer to the temptation of Liturgical Renovationism. Thus, to accuse him of it, without having read his point of view already discredits the accusation as erroneous, unserious.

To be fair, Fr. Alexander reflects a certain Parisian haughtiness in his blunt use of critical language and the way he expresses himself at times. Yes, this can be deemed to be "overly positivist, higher critical, irreverent," but the underlying issue of restoring Eucharistic piety to a Patristic standard and undoing centuries of spiritually deadening nominalist accretions trumps that point.

The Proskomedia "may have developed" with time to become its modern form, and Fr. Alexander does offer his hypotheses in this regard, but by no means was it not present in earlier liturgy. Thus, its fundamental mystagogical meaning was inherently present at the beginning and has been preserved, not revealed in some papist paradigm of "gradual revelation" of the HOLY SPIRIT, implying a "process of perfection of the process of Divine Revelation." In that sectarian world, the HOLY SPIRIT has "to take time to get it right." That's heretical nonsense.

Fr. Alexander specifically mentions St. Maximos and St. Dionysios, for they were the PRINCIPLE THEOLOGIANS and "GODSEERS," if you will, who expounded the Mystagogy of the Liturgy and revealed to us the theological Truth behind it as a process of participation in the eschaton. "Later" Saints/Fathers either reinforced their views by synthesizing them into theological anthologies or with fragmentary comments but also with accounts of their personal life in the Eucharist in their lives. Some have lost the sense of the eschatological reality of the Liturgy as the nexus of Heaven and Earth and the fulfillment of mankind and his sanctification in CHRIST JESUS where the boundaries between heaven and earth are transcended and the Eight Day of GOD's Glory is manifested. One does "not grow out of this" or "become more reasonable" in liturgical approach when with time this fundamental reality is OBSCURED and NOT REINFORCED, thereby hindering the faithful's conception witness of the Eighth day in the Eucharist. Development, "evolution" as you imply? Not hardly, DEVOLUTION INTO A HERETICAL NOMINALISM which acts to stifle the lives of the believers and their theosis in CHRIST. The very language YOU USE in this regard has about it a sophomoric flippancy UNWORTHY OF THE FATHERS, pregnant with HIGHER CRITICISM and IGNORANT of even the modicum of respect due to those who reveal Divine Truth. The HOLY SPIRIT and worship was not incomplete in the Apostolic Church, but has remained WHOLE, making mankind WHOLE in HIM since the day of Pentecost, and implying otherwise is some sort of Protestant - Renovationist - Ecumenist nonsense unworthy of an Orthodox Christian. The fact your nominalist point of view reinforces this disconnect with Patristic piety and ignorantly insults the work of the HOLY SPIRIT offers all the comment necessary on the heterodoxy of your liturgics.

I reiterate:

"The Divine Liturgy is much more than a symbolic nominalism with a quasi didactic purpose culminating in a magical moment of the Consecration of the Gifts but rather a Mystagogical gathering of the People of God as the Church in a nexus of heaven and earth where they not only partake of but become the Body and Blood of Christ, a moment of fulfilled eschatology where creation is made whole in Christ."

Symbolic nominalism having a "didactic character" which obscures or confuses the faithful and impinges upon the frequency of their full participation in the fulfillment of creation in the Eighth Day has no justification. Do we need metaphor or the WHOLE LIFE in the HOLY SPIRIT in an eschatological fulfillment. Do we need the Eucharist as LIFE, our LIFE, or a pious lecture flattering, obscuring it, making it less accessible, often with theological tangents, in its place?

The custom of the Russian church and of the Church of the Holy Fathers must be one of "madmen" for they understood that in the event that no altar nor Holy Relics presented themselves that then the Eucharist could be celebrated on the living body of a Great Schemamonk, for such a monk is considered to be a living vessel in CHRIST and CONSECRATED, living relics, deified in the Body and Blood of CHRIST by the HOLY SPIRIT sent from GOD the FATHER. And we are ALL CALLED TO THIS REALITY. THIS IS WHY CHRIST BECAME MAN AND IS THE GOD MAN! That is Orthodox Theology. Where, yes, WE DO become inasmuch as we participate in the Uncreated Energies of CHRIST's Grace by the HOLY SPIRIT sent from GOD the FATHER, the BODY and BLOOD of CHRIST. And as we witness Glory and LIVE IN CHRIST through time, our sanctification increases and we are made more Holy, more deified. This is called theosis. This process of pefection has no end according to St. Gregory of Nyssa. Thus, your understanding is warped and heterodox and is again reinforced by your nominalist presuppositions which lead you into grave errors.

This makes the point you are unread and fixated upon establishing differences between "local practices in time" a priori and disqualifies any commentary on an event outside of time in its culmination in the Eighth Day. You present a harangue for nominalism. Nor does your christological understanding even accomodate the Resurrection and Ascension and pouring forth of the SPIRIT to manifest not only CHRIST to us BUT WITHIN US, and as we "put on CHRIST" more worthily with greater reverence we stop rejecting grace freely given and participate ever more in the Life of Holiness in a reality where human nature has a PROTOTYPE fully deified we continually approach and which deifies us by partaking of this NATURE IN THE EUCHARIST and continually sanctifies us in HIS HOLINESS by HIS GODMANHOOD, ie theosis. St. Justin (Popovich) et al.

The process of the Church in America is a process with the goal culminating in a local American Orthodox tradition. Yes, the Neo Patristic Synthesis is a dialogue with our present circumstance taking into account the realities of yesterday and tomorrow and "what has been handed down," but it also entails the appreciation of Patristic piety, understanding, teaching, where, when things have been obscured by nominalism, they must be confronted with a Patristic litmus test, critically evaluated and either transformed or reevaluated. Likewise, the whole notion of "reinstituting past liturgical forms or rites."

We have OUR context. OUR context is shaped by ONE TRUTH and WITNESS, and our local expression will be a culmination of evaluation of what best forms and witnesses to the People of GOD in the Eighth Day and not necessarily what best "restores" or "is most relevent to today."

Where I disagree with some is where they begin to willy nilly omit certain parts of services or amplify their occluded perceptions of antiquity's celebration of these services in most contrived ways. Anything exaggerated, bordering on radical or irreverent revision or even something skirting charismatic demonic mediumism or flirting with a "congregational Priesthood" continually greets jeers both amongst OCA faithful and clergy and has generally died out as unworthy of our local church. I am in opposition to it and resist it. Where I personally am open is in the restoration of the reading of the "private prayers" aloud, the restoration of congregational singing (in conjunction with choirs, cantors, antiphonal singing, etc.) and traditional chant alloyed with some polyphony in a liturgical observance which incorporates in ritual aspects of various Byzantine local churches, but also is open to the liturgical rituals of the pre schism West and Antioch and Alexandria. A melding of these traditions and pieties will eventually create a local American Orthodox liturgical piety. That is the point behind the OCA approach, in my view, and why I endorse it. By the same token, I also endorse a return to a paradigm of "cathedral" versus "monastic" worship where I feel fidelity and a stricter preservation of liturgical forms to be more appropriate in a monastic setting. I feel American Orthodox monasticism should by undergirded by Athonite litugical piety colored by other local church monastic ritual, much like our Mother Russian church observed in its history.

Let us be clear, we as the OCA are a child of a Russian Orthodoxy which viewed local language, tradition and piety as legitimate in a familial way in a greater multinational family, uniting disparate peoples in language and ethnos in one particular type of Orthodox culture, whose center happened to become Russo- Slavic. That is how people like me in the OCA still term ourselves "Russian Orthodox," but we also understand that this model of Orthodox enculturation of a foreign land will eventually lead to its own local Orthodoxy. We are working to make this day our reality. What we are gifted with in America is an assembling of most all Orthodox local traditions and a melding of them which we desire to assimilate into one whole in a distinct local church formed in appreciation and observation of the example provided for us by our Mother Russian church.

It is thereby we set our guideposts and tune our studies and approach. In observance of piety and life in the Tradition in the Eighth Day by the HOLY SPIRIT. That is the liturgical approach we offer and endorse.

The use of the labels "Renovationists" and "Protestants" in conjunction with the label "conservative" means just what it is constructed to say "conservative Renovationists" and "conservative Protestants." That is what a nominalist "Orthodox" in piety and theological/liturgical/canonical outlook amounts to. That is what your point of view constitutes.

No one is worthy to partake of the Holy and Divine Mysteries, but one becomes less unworthy by partaking of them. Conversely, one becomes MORE UNWORTHY BY NOT PARTAKING OF THEM AND FURTHER ESTRANGES HIMSELF FROM THE LIFE IN CHRIST.

Moreover, the canonical consciousness of St. Nikodemos is something we are all called to "grow into" and it presupposes an increasing formation, piety, life of prayer, sacramental witness, and not a static reality which makes concessions to the modern world and grounds itself on the quicksand of the "times do not permit." That is Renovationism. In this process of formation, therapy, the faithful are formed first as infants, then as children, then as teens, finally as adults, then as our seniors. This begins with an active life in the Mysteries with an understanding of the necessity of the frequency of participation in the LIFE to make it ones OWN to LIVE IN CHRIST and DIE TO THE WORLD and its ways.

Thus, there are no quasi - pious arguments for nominal Eucharistic observance, save PRELEST', and, no the Canons are NOT AN IMPEDIMENT, but, rather, the INFRASTRUCTURE which we grow into and in and increasingly observe, applied to us as we mature. Just as we don't feed infants steak, we don't toss the Pedalion at those just being formed into Orthodoxy. Likewise, just as we are able to eat and be nourished by meat and solid food as adults so too do we increasingly become capable of canonical observance and fidelity. Just as we don't live our lives eating baby food so too must we not ignore nor defy the Holy Canons in our personal formations, ESPECIALLY when some PURPOSE TO OPPOSE HERESY AND SCHISM IN THEIR NAME!!!

You illustrate by your point of view the alienation from Orthodoxy your path has taken, the bankruptcy of nominalism and its inherent assault against Orthodox piety and its maltreatment of Orthodox Christians by setting up chasms between your church polity/mindset and CHRIST. Your words underscore your distance from the actual Holy Tradition. That you ruminate on a litany or liturgical practice does you no justice, for you are leaping before crawling to a disastrous end. To affirm the Tradition is TO LIVE IT IN CHRIST JESUS, not adorn a picture of it. Moreover, no matter how much one adorns the picture, if one neglects to LIVE THE TRADITION, one alienates oneself from the Church, distances oneself from the HOLY SPIRIT, rejects the NEW LIFE in CHRIST.

That is precisely why the nominalism you advocate is heterodox, is sectarian and divorced from Orthodox Faith and practice, and that is why your deformed views on "liturgical conservatism," "outmoded Fathers," "impossible Canons," the "rite of Constantinople vs. 'other rites," etc. all allude to a peering into the Orthodox Church as a critic who never actually lives the LIFE THE CHURCH OFFERS and resists the HOLY SPIRIT by his very callousness and divorce from the reality of CHRIST's Church. This deformed, denatured and spiritually decomposing worldview ruminates on particulars on a whim, but never comes to appreciate the whole, never lives it, constantly flaunts a pseudo-piety, a pseudo-doxy, but never enters the Church to know what it is really talking about. That is its tragedy and the inherent vindication of the approach to Liturgical Theology I have underscored in response to you. Your views are your own rebuttal.

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+Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν.

St. Isaac the Syrian put it marvelously: "When you turn to God in prayer, be in your thoughts as an ant, as a serpent of the earth, like a worm, like a stuttering child. Do not speak to Him something philosophical or high-sounding, but approach Him with a child's attitude" (Homily 49). Those who have acquired genuine prayer experience an ineffable poverty of the spirit when they stand before the Lord, glorify and praise Him, confess to Him, or present to Him their entreaties. They feel as if they had turned to nothing, as if they did not exist. That is natural. For when he who is in prayer experiences the fullness of the divine presence, of Life Itself, of Life abundant and unfathomable, then his own life strikes him as a tiny drop in comparison to the boundless ocean. --St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

Elder Sophrony (Sakharov)

The contemporary spiritual, theological problem concerns the person [πρόσωπο]… Revelation reveals that “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). If He says, “I am” it means that He is a person. The word “I” has great significance. For it expresses the person. God says, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Science cannot say this. Only revelation can say this. And we need to base ourselves on revelation, which the Lord never refuted…Theology is the content of our prayers. And an example of this theology is the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. The whole anaphora is theology and is expressed through prayer. But then theology comes as a state of being. John the Theologian, from an academic point of view, was not a theologian, he says things simply. His theology, however, is a state of being. Whatever he says becomes dogma for everyone. But the only study that enables us to sense what God is like, is the ascetic life according to the commandments of the Gospel. When our life is lived according to the will of God, then we understand that there cannot be a difference between the commandments and the mind of God Himself. When we think according to the commandments, then our mind gets used to thinking as God Himself thinks. And regarding theosis, they say: but what is theosis? With obedience to the abbot from the beginning, one’s will is cut off, then in obedience to the Gospel commandments one reaches this state. We do small things but the results must become great. Through obedience we enter into the life of divine Being. We have good descriptions of this in the writings of St. Nicodemus the Athonite. I have told others, as well, that when they learn things from the world, they are living in sin. They need to free themselves through asceticism. This is how I tried to make them understand the need for patience. [Just as the Incarnation was a great kenotic act, where Christ God became man as one person and bore our sins patiently with humility and love. In following Him, we become true persons in Him and realize our life and fully live our freedom. It is here where personhood finds its greatest achievement: in putting on Christ and His indwelling in us by the Holy Spirit sent from God the Father. The very essence of our life must become constant personal encounter with Christ, and in this we become truly persons, truly free, truly loving. This is how personhood is understood in theosis. We fulfill our personhood in living in Christ and His dwelling within us, and inasmuch as He has perfected humanity, He raises us in freedom, in love, to the fulfillment of our humanity, as true persons in Him.]

St. Justin (Popovich) of Chelje

The principal characteristic of falling into sin is always the same: wanting to be good for one's own sake; wanting to be perfect for one's own sake; wanting to be God for one's own sake. In this manner, however, man unconsciously equates himself to the devil, because the devil also wanted to become God for his own sake, to put himself in the place of God. And in this self-elevation he instantly became devil, completely separated from God, and always in opposition to Him. Therefore, the essence of sin, of every sin (svegreha), consists of this arrogant self-aggrandizement. This is the very essence of the devil himself, of Satan. It is nothing other than one's wanting to remain within one's own being, wanting nothing within one's self other than oneself. The entire devil is found here: in the desire to exclude God, in the desire to always be by himself, to always belong only to himself, to be entirely within himself and always for himself, to be forever hermetically sealed in opposition to God and everything that belongs to God. And what is this? It is egotism and self-love embraced in all eternity, that is to say: it is hell. For that is essentially what the humanist is - entirely within himself, by himself, for himself, always spitefully closed in opposition to God. Here lies every humanism, every hominism. The culmination of such satanically oriented humanism is the desire to become good for the sake of evil, to become God for the sake of the devil. It proceeds from the promise of the devil to our forefathers in Paradise—that with his help, "they would become as gods" (Gen. 3: 5). Man was created with theanthropic potential by God who loves mankind, so that he might voluntarily direct himself, through God, toward becoming God-man, based on the divinity of his nature. Man, however, with his free will sought sinlessness through sin, sought God through the devil. And assuredly, following this road he would have become identical with the devil had not God interceded in His immeasurable love of mankind and in His great mercy. By becoming man, that is to say God-man, he redirected man toward the God-man. He introduced him to the Church which is his body, to the reward (podvig) of theosis through the holy mysteries and the blessed virtues. And in this manner he gave man the strength to become "a perfect man, in the measure of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13), to achieve, that is, the Divine destiny, to voluntarily become God-man by grace. The fall of the pope is a consequence of the desire to substitute man for the God-man...In the kingdom of humanism the place of the God-man had been usurped by the Vicarius Christi, and the God-man has thus been exiled to Heaven. This surely results in a peculiar deincarnation of Christ the God-man, does it not? "In Western Europe, Christianity has been gradually metamorphosed, to humanism. Over a long period of time and with perseverance, the Divine-Human [God-man] has steadily been diminishing. He has been changed, He has been narrowed down and finally reduced to a mere man: to the “infallible” man in Rome and the equally "infallible" men in London and Berlin. This is how Papism came into being, by stripping Christ of everything, just as Protestantism similarly did, by asking little of Christ, and quite often, nothing at all. Both in Papism and in Protestantism, man has replaced the Divine-Human Christ, both as the highest value and the highest criterion. Painstaking and deplorable changes to the Divine-Human's work and teachings have been accomplished. Papism has steadily and persistently been striving to substitute the Divine Man with a mortal man, until finally, in its dogma defining the infallibility of (a mere mortal) the pope, the Divine-Human Christ was once and for all substituted by an ephemeral, "infallible" man; because thanks to this dogma, the pope was decisively and clearly pronounced as being something superior – not only to all men, but even to the holy Apostles, the holy Fathers, and the holy Ecumenical Councils. With this kind of deviation from the Divine-Human Christ, from the ecumenical Church which is the Divine-Human’s organism, Papism outdid even Luther, the founder of Protestantism. Therefore, the first radical protest that was voiced in the name of humanism but against the Divine-Human Christ and his Divine-Human organism—the Church—should be sought in Papism, not in Lutheranism. Papism is in fact the first and the oldest form of Protestantism. The holy apostles were the first god-men by grace. Like the Apostle Paul each of them, by his integral life, could have said of himself: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). Each of them is a Christ repeated; or, to be more exact, a continuation of Christ. Everything in them is theanthropic because everything was recieved from the God-man. Apostolicity is nothing other than the God-manhood of the Lord Christ, freely assimilated through the holy struggles of the holy virtues: faith, love, hope, prayer, fasting, etc. This means that everything that is of man lives in them freely through the God-man, thinks through the God-man, feels through the God-man, acts through the God-man and wills through the God-man. For them, the historical God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the supreme value and the supreme criterion. Everything in them is of the God-man, for the sake of the God-man, and in the God-man. And it is always and everywhere thus. That for them is immortality in the time and space of this world. Thereby are they even on this earth partakers of the theanthropic eternity of Christ. This theanthropic apostolicity is integrally continued in the earthly successors of the Christ-bearing apostles: in the holy fathers. Among them, in essence, there is no difference: the same God-man Christ lives, acts, enlivens and makes them all eternal in equal measure, He Who is the same yesterday, and today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). Through the holy fathers, the holy apostles live on with all their theanthropic riches, theanthropic worlds, theanthropic holy things, theanthropic mysteries, and theanthropic virtues. The holy fathers in fact are continuously apostolizing, whether as distinct godlike personalities, or as bishops of the local churches, or as members of the holy ecumenical and holy local councils. For all of them there is but one Truth, one Transcendent Truth: the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Behold, the holy ecumenical councils, from the first to the last, confess, defend, believe, announce, and vigilantly preserve but a single supreme value: the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. The principal Tradition, the transcendent Tradition, of the Orthodox Church is the living God-man Christ, entire in the theanthropic Body of the Church of which He is the immortal, eternal Head. This is not merely the message, but the transcendent message of the holy apostles and the holy fathers. They know Christ crucified, Christ resurrected, Christ ascended. They all, by their integral lives and teachings, with a single soul and a single voice, confess that Christ the God-man is wholly in His Church, as in His Body. Each of the holy fathers could rightly repeat with St. Maximus the Confessor: "In no wise am I expounding my own opinion, but that which I have been taught by the fathers, without changing aught in their teaching. And from the immortal proclamation of St. John of Damascus there resounds the universal confession of all the holy fathers who were glorified by God: "Whatever has been transmitted to us through the Law, and the prophets, and the apostles, and the evangelists, we receive and know and esteem highly, and beyond that we ask nothing more… Let us be fully satisfied with it, and rest therein, removing not the ancient landmarks (Prov. 22:28), nor violating the divine Tradition." And then, the touching, fatherly admonition of the holy Damascene, directed to all Orthodox Christians: "Wherefore, brethren, let us plant ourselves upon the rock of faith and the Tradition of the Church, removing not the landmarks set by our holy fathers, nor giving room to those who are anxious to introduce novelties and to undermine the structure of God's holy ecumenical and apostolic Church. For if everyone were allowed a free hand, little by little the entire Body of the Church would be destroyed. The holy Tradition is wholly of the God-man, wholly of the holy apostles, wholly of the holy fathers, wholly of the Church, in the Church, and by the Church. The holy fathers are nothing other than the "guardians of the apostolic tradition. " All of them, like the holy apostles themselves, are but "witnesses" of a single and unique Truth: the transcendent Truth of Christ, the God-man. They preach and confess it without rest, they, the "golden mouths of the Word." The God-man, the Lord Christ is one, unique, and indivisible. So also is the Church unique and indivisible, for she is the incarnation of the Theanthropos Christ, continuing through the ages and through all eternity. Being such by her nature and in her earthly history, the Church may not be divided. It is only possible to fall away from her. That unity and uniqueness of the Church is theanthropic from the very beginning and through all the ages and all eternity. Apostolic succession, the apostolic heritage, is theanthropic from first to last. What is it that the holy apostles are transmitting to their successors as their heritage? The Lord Christ, the God-man Himself, with all the imperishable riches of His wondrous theanthropic Personality, Christ—the Head of the Church, her sole Head. If it does not transmit that, apostolic succession ceases to be apostolic, and the apostolic Tradition is lost, for there is no longer an apostolic hierarchy and an apostolic Church. The holy Tradition is the Gospel of the Lord Christ, and the Lord Christ Himself, Whom the Holy Spirit instills in each and every believing soul, in the entire Church. Whatever is Christ's, by the power of the Holy Spirit becomes ours, human; but only within the body of the Church. The Holy Spirit—the soul of the Church, incorporates each believer, as a tiny cell, into the body of the Church and makes him a "co-heir" of the God-man (Eph. 3:6). In reality the Holy Spirit makes every believer into a God-man by grace. For what is life in the Church? Nothing other than the transfiguration of each believer into a God-man by grace through his personal, evangelical virtues; it is his growth in Christ, the putting on of Christ by growing in the Church and being a member of the Church. A Christian's life is a ceaseless, Christ-centered theophany: the Holy Spirit, through the holy mysteries and the holy virtues, transmits Christ the Savior to each believer, renders him a living tradition, a living life: "Christ who is our life" (Col. 3:4). Everything Christ's thereby becomes ours, ours for all eternity: His truth, His righteousness, His love, His life, and His entire divine Hypostasis. Holy Tradition? It is the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man Himself, with all the riches of his divine Hypostasis and, through Him and for His sake, those of the Holy Trinity. That is most fully given and articulated in the Holy Eucharist, wherein, for our sake and for our salvation, the Savior's entire theanthropic economy of salvation is performed and repeated. Therein wholly resides the God-man with all His wondrous and miraculous gifts; He is there, and in the Church's life of prayer and liturgy. Through all this, the Savior's philanthropic proclamation ceaselessly resounds: "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Mt. 28 20): He is with the apostles and, through the apostles, with all the faithful, world without end. This is the whole of the holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church of the apostles: life in Christ = life in the Holy Trinity; growth in Christ = growth in the Trinity (cf. Mt. 28: 19-20). Of extraordinary importance is the following: in Christ's Orthodox Church, the Holy Tradition, ever living and life-giving, comprises: the holy liturgy, all the divine services, all the holy mysteries, all the holy virtues, the totality of eternal truth and eternal righteousness, all love, all eternal life, the whole of the God-man, the Lord Christ, the entire Holy Trinity, and the entire theanthropic life of the Church in its theanthropic fullness, with the All-holy Theotokos and all the saints. The personality of the Lord Christ the God-man, transfigured within the Church, immersed in the prayerful, liturgical, and boundless sea of grace, wholly contained in the Eucharist, and wholly in the Church—this is holy Tradition. This authentic good news is confessed by the holy fathers and the holy ecumenical councils. By prayer and piety holy Tradition is preserved from all human demonism and devilish humanism, and in it is preserved the entire Lord Christ, He Who is the eternal Tradition of the Church. "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh" (I Tim. 3 16): He was manifest as a man, as a God-man, as the Church, and by His philanthropic act of salvation and deification of humanity He magnified and exalted man above the holy cherubim and the most holy seraphim.

Fr. Georges V. Florovsky

I believe that the church in which I was baptized and brought up ‘is’ in very truth ‘the Church’, i.e. ‘the true’ Church and the ‘only’ true Church . . . I am therefore compelled to regard all other Christian churches as deficient, and in many cases can identify these deficiencies accurately enough. Therefore, for me, Christian reunion is simply universal conversion to Orthodoxy. I have no confessional loyalty; my loyalty belongs solely to the ‘Una Sancta’. Without a doubt, the so-called 'branch' theory [Or "Two Lungs" ecclesiology] is unacceptable. This theory depicts the cleavages of the Christian world in too complacent and comfortable a manner. The onlooker may not be able immediately to discern the schismatic [heretical] 'branches' from the Catholic trunk. In its essence, moreover, a schism [heretical body] is not just a branch. It is also the will for schism [or heresy]. Christ conquered the world. This victory consists in His having created His own Church. In the midst of the vanity and poverty, of the weakness and suffering of human history, He laid the foundations of a "new being." The Church is Christ’s work on earth; it is the image and abode of His blessed Presence in the world. And on the day of Pentecost The Holy Spirit descended on the Church, which was then represented by the twelve Apostles and those who were with them. He entered into the world in order to abide with us and act more fully than He had ever acted before; "for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39). The Holy Spirit descended once and for always. This is a tremendous and unfathomable mystery. He lives and abides ceaselessly in the church. In the Church we receive the Spirit of adoption (Rom. 8:15). Through reaching towards and accepting the Holy Ghost we become eternally God’s. In the Church our salvation is perfected; the sanctification and transfiguration, the theosis of the human race is accomplished. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus: [Outside the Church there is no salvation]. All the categorical strength and point of this aphorism lies in its tautology. Outside the Church there is no salvation, because salvation is the Church. For salvation is the revelation of the way for every one who believes in Christ's name. This revelation is to be found only in the Church. In the Church, as in the Body of Christ, in its theanthropic organism, the mystery of incarnation, the mystery of the "two natures," indissolubly united, is continually accomplished. In the Incarnation of the Word is the fullness of revelation, a revelation not only of God, but also of man. "For the Son of God became the Son of Man," writes St. Irenaeus, "to the end that man too might become the son of God" (Adv. Haere. 3:10, 2). In Christ, as God-Man, the meaning of human existence is not only revealed, but accomplished. In Christ human nature is perfected, it is renewed, rebuilt, created anew. Human destiny reaches its goal, and henceforth human life is, according to the word of the Apostle, "hid with Christ in God" (Coloss. 3:3). In this sense Christ is the "Last Adam" (1 Cor. 15:45), a true man. In Him is the measure and limit of human life. He rose "As the first fruits of them that are asleep" (1 Cor. 15:20-22). He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God. His Glory is the glory of all human existence. Christ has entered the pre-eternal glory; He has entered it as Man and has called the whole of mankind to abide with Him and in Him. "God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ ... and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:4-6). Therein lies the mystery of the Church as Christ's Body. The Church is fulness, (Τò πληρωμα) that is, fulfilment, completion (Eph. 1:23). In this manner St. John Chrysostom explains the words of the Apostle: "The Church is the fulfilment of Christ in the same manner as the head completes the body and the body is completed by the head. Thus we understand why the Apostle sees that Christ, as the Head needs all His members. Because if many of us were not, one the hand, one the foot, one yet another member, His body would not be complete. Thus His body is formed of all the members. This means, "That the head will be complete, only when the body is perfect; when we all are most firmly united and strengthened" (In Ephes. Hom. 3, 2 (Migne, P.G. Ixii. c. 26)). Bishop Theophanes repeats the explanation of Chrysostom: "The Church is the fulfilment of Christ in the same manner as the tree is the fulfilment of the grain. All that is contained in the grain in a condensed manner, receives its full development in the tree ... He Himself is complete and all-perfect, but not yet has He drawn mankind to Himself in final completeness. It is only gradually that mankind enters into Communion with Him and so gives a new fulness to His work, which thereby attains its full accomplishment. The Church is completeness itself; it is the continuation and the fulfilment of the theanthropic union. The Church is transfigured and regenerated mankind. The meaning of this regeneration and transfiguration is that in the Church mankind becomes one unity, "in one body" (Eph. 2:16). The life of the Church is unity and union. The body is "knit together" and "increaseth" (Col 2:19) in unity of Spirit, in unity of love. The realm of the Church is unity. And of course this unity is no outward one, but is inner, intimate, organic. It is the unity of the living body, the unity of the organism. The Church is a unity not only in the sense that it is one and unique; it is a unity, first of all, because its very being consists in reuniting separated and divided mankind. It is this unity which is the "sobornost" or catholicity of the Church. In the Church humanity passes over into another plane, begins a new manner of existence. A new life becomes possible, a true, whole and complete life, a catholic life, "in the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3). A new existence begins, a new principle of life, "Even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us ... that they may be one even as We are one" (John 17:21-23). This is the mystery of the final reunion in the image of the Unity of the Holy Trinity. It is realized in the life and construction of the Church, it is the mystery of sobornost, the mystery of catholicity.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann

By and in the Eucharist, understood and lived as the Sacrament of the Church, as the act, which ever makes the Church to be what she is — the People of God, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ, the gift and manifestation of the new life of the new age. It is here and only here, in the unique center of all Christian life and experience that theology can find again its fountain of youth, be regenerated as a living testimony to the living Church, her faith, love and hope. But just as the Church of the Old Covenant, the old Israel, existed as a passage to the New Covenant, was instituted in order to prepare the ways of the Lord, the Church as institution exists in order to reveal — in "this world" — the "world to come," the Kingdom of God, fulfilled and manifested in Christ. She is the passage of the "old" into the "new" — yet what is being redeemed, renewed and transfigured through her is not the "Church," but the old life itself, the old Adam and the whole of creation. And she is this "passage" precisely because as institution she is "bone of the bones and flesh of the flesh" of this world, because she stands for the whole creation, truly represents it, assumes all of its life and offers it — in Christ — to God. She is indeed instituted for the world and not as a separate "religious" institution existing for the specifically religious needs of men. She represents — "makes present" — the whole of mankind, because mankind and creation were called from the very beginning to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the receptacle of Divine life. The Church is thus the restoration by God and the acceptance by man of the original and eternal destiny of creation itself. She is the presence of the Divine Act, which restores and the obedience of men who accept this act. Yet it is only when she performs and fulfills this "passage," when, in other terms, she transcends herself as "institution" and "society" and becomes indeed the new life of the new creation, that she is the Body of Christ. As institution the Church is in this world the sacrament of the Body of Christ, of the Kingdom of God and the world to come. We can now return to the Eucharist, for it is indeed the very act of passage in which the Church fulfills herself as a new creation and, therefore, the Sacrament of the Church. In the Eucharist, the Church transcends the dimensions of "institution" and becomes the Body of Christ. It is the "eschaton" of the Church, her manifestation as the world to come.

Salt of the Earth

Enlarging the Heart

Second Terrace

Third Millennial Templar

The Western Confucian

Theology and Society

Pseudo-Polymath

But creation needed a well containing its own spring, that those who drew near it and drank their full might remain undefeated by the attacks of weaknesses and deprivations inherent in the created world.... Building now the new Jerusalem, raising up a temple for Himself with living stones and gathering us into a holy and world wide Church, He sets in its foundation, which is Christ, the ever-flowing fount of grace.--St. Gregory Palamas